William Bounds Peppermills

    The origin of the William Bounds peppermill illustrates the ingenuity and intelligence that has spawned the rise of gourmet cooking in the United States.   William Bounds was an inventor by vocation.  He designed and patented most of the internal parts of the instamatic camera.

    He took on the job of designing a better peppermill because the family's kept breaking down.  He determined that there were two main reasons the typical mill wore out so fast:  (1) the gears grinding the pepper moved against each other causing wear and tear and (2) the shaft to which the rotating gear was attached floated freely in the mill accelerating wear and tear.

   To remedy the problems, Mr. Bounds attached a permanent nut near the top of the inner shaft to hold it in place and designed a milling gear to go at the lower end.  The milling head causes the peppercorns to crack against each other; that way metal does not touch metal.  Mr. Bounds put a snap ring at the top which raises and lowers the milling mechanism in a stair stop fashion to get three calibrated openings at the bottom and thus three grinds:  coarse (mill head up), medium (in between), and fine (mill head down).   Furthermore, since he wanted the mill to last, he had all the internal metal parts made of stainless steel, which enables a peppermill to be used for salt.

    The first mill, called "Shake'N'Twist," went on sale in 1960, designed to look like the silhouette of the Space Needle at the Seattle World's Fair.   To this day every mill is hand assembled.  Also, Bounds has its own acrylic molding machines.

    Bounds' best seller world wide, due to European use, is their unique nutmeg mill which shaves the nutmeg.  Bounds also produces a spicemill made of biomedical ceramic which does not hold oils or harbor bacteria.